HPS Colloquium 4:15-5:30 T (Howard)

1 Cr. Hr.

Graduate Students Only

Group Discussion by the HPS faculty and students of a prominent recent work in the field of HPS and research presentations by visiting scholars. Required course for HPS students in first and second years of the HPS Program.

Ethics and Science 4:00-6:30 W (Shrader-Frechette)

3 Cr. Hrs. Crosslist: BIOS 543

This course will focus on typical ethical problems likely to arise on conducting scientific research; the subtle ways in which scientific inferences, models, and methods may exhibit bias values; the conflicts of interest that often face researchers; the ethical arguments for alternative default rules in science; classical ethical techniques for resolving ethical dilemmas in science; necessary and sufficient conditions for scientific whistle blowing; appropriate behavior under scientific uncertainty; and analysis of ways that unethical science can compromise objectivity, consent, due process, the common good, rights to know, responsibility, and justice.  Course texts include articles from scientific journals, reports of the National Academy of Sciences, and three books on ethics of scientific research (Erwin et al, Penslar, and Shrader-Frechette.   Emphasis will be on actual scientific case studies and on short, analytic papers evaluating particular ethical problems in these case studies.

Science and Social Values 11:45-1:00 MW (Kourany)

3 Cr. Hrs. Crosslist: PHIL 560/438, STV 440

Should science be value free, or should it be shaped by the needs and ideals of the society that supports it?  If the former, how can scientists shaped by society contribute to it, and what claim to the resources of the society can scientists legitimately make?  If the latter, how can scientists still claim to be objective?

These are some of the questions we shall pursue in this course.  Their pursuit will take us through a varied terrain—e.g., C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” divide and its manifestation in the current “science wars,” the case of Lysenko and Soviet science, the current “war” on breast cancer, new understandings of scientific objectivity, and new social philosophies of science (especially those offered by Helen Longino and Philip Kitcher).

Requirements: The style of the course will be discussions, and these will be informed by readings drawn from a variety of sources, including natural and social scientists as well as historians and philosophers of science.  The requirements will include two or three papers.

History of Economic Thought 12:30-1:45 TH (Mirowski)

3 Cr. Hrs. Crosslist: ECON 506

Permission Required

This course intends to ask how it is that we have arrived at this curious configuration of doctrines now called "economics"; and importantly, how differing modes of historical discourse tend to ratify us in our prejudices about our own possible involvement in this project. The course will begin in the 18th century with the rise of a self-conscious discipline, and take us through the stabilization of the modern orthodoxy in WWII. Effort will be made to discuss the shifting relationship of economics to the other sciences, natural and social. A basic knowledge of economics (including introductory economics and preferably intermediate economics) will be presumed.

History of the Philosophy of Science to 1750 2:00-3:15 TH (Joy)

3 Cr. Hrs. Crosslist: PHIL 587

Permission Required

This seminar begins by examining four conceptions of science: those of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Chrysippus.  It then considers how the natural philosophies developed by their ancient traditions were transformed by medieval and modern thinkers, who significantly revised the goals of previous scientific inquiry.  Among the moderns, we will focus on Descartes, Boyle, and Newton.

Requirements: Course requirements will include class presentations and two medium-length papers.

Religion & Science: Conflict or Concord 1:30-2:45 MW (Plantinga)

3 Cr. Hrs. Crosslist: PHIL 589
Permission Required

One of the most interesting and important topics of the last 500 years is the relation of the newly emerging modern science to religious belief-in particular Christianity.  This course deals with that topic.  We'll begin by considering views according to which there really can't be intellective interaction between science and religion (some of van Fraassen's work suggests this), move to views according to which there can be such interaction, but only if one or the other is over stepping its bounds (Gould), and then consider views according to which such interaction is perfectly proper.  Clearly there can be many different sorts of contact: for example, one way support, mutual support, conflict (Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins), and the like.  We'll be interested in particular in cases where there appears to have been conflict, as is widely alleged to be the case with the Copernican revolution and the advent of Darwinian evolution.  In such cases, what is the rational response on the part of someone who is committed both to the central claims of Christianity and is also enthusiastic about science?  How shall we think about the epistemology of such conflict?  As a particular contemporary case in point we'll take a closer look at the contrast between Christian ways of understanding ourselves and some of the claims of sociobiology or evolutionary psychology. 

Thesis Direction (Howard)

Thesis direction for terminating Master’s students.

Non-resident Thesis Direction (Howard)

Thesis direction for terminating Master’s students.

Scientific Realism 11:00-12:15 TH (McMullin)

3 Cr. Hrs. Crosslist: PHIL 680

The controversy regarding realism and anti-realism has been one of the two or three focal issues in the philosophy of science over recent decades. After a brief look at the historical origins of this controversy in early astronomy and in Newtonian mechanics, we shall go on to study the criticisms, defenses, and explications of scientific realism in the writings of van Fraassen, Putnam, Fine, Hacking Laudan, Psillos, Kukla, and Ganson. We will rely mainly on reproductions of selections from historical sources as well as of recent articles.

Requirements: Term paper and take-home final.

Directed Readings

Directed Readings carried out under individual HPS faculty supervision.

Research and Dissertation (Howard)

Dissertation research for Ph.D. students.

Nonresident Dissertation Research (Howard)

Dissertation research for Ph.D. students.